In Continuum.

In Between Contrasts




Still is the life
Of your room when you're not inside
And all of your things
Tell the sweetest storyline

It is the weekend, and I hated the town for that. Very much like the post I typed a while ago for my hatred towards the Saturday's town, it pretty much applied for today's trip downtown. The sunny days in June, dominated mostly by the angry sun scorching to Earth like a jealous child, with occasional torrents of rain like a tease. Going out on a weekend afternoon is such a chore right now, and being exposed to the sun feel as good as being thrown into a blazing furnace. You feel the prickling of the sun's fingers on your skin, the perspiration pouring down your back, and your shirt sticking to your skin like a layer of plastic, incubating the heat inside until it is so suffocating that you just want to grab somebody and scream into his or her face. How nice of the city development board of the country to shave the trees along the road that leads to the nearest bus stop at my house, ridding me of the shelters from the sun's jealousy. How very apt indeed.

In the embrace of the heat today, I went around Bugis area to look for a printing shop that opens on a Saturday. The shop that I usually go to was closed by the time I got there, but I was lucky enough to find another one just around the corner, though at a steeper price and a ruder shop attendant. But I needed to get LiPing's birthday poster printed, and it's not like I wanted to travel to anywhere else under the blazing sun to get the job done. Despite the cool, slick music playing in my ears from the Ocean's Twelve soundtrack, even those failed to get rid of the raging inferno inside my body. The heat was getting to my nerves, and I swear the next person to say "You went through NS, why are you afraid of the sun?" will be strangled by my bare hands.

The tears on these sheets
And your footsteps down the hall
So tell me what I did
I can't find where the moment went wrong at all

I made my way alone to The Central today, a newly opened shopping mall just off the side of Singapore River. Most of the shops were still under renovation then, boarded up by wooden walls and plastered with paper notices all over concerning their opening dates. I wandered the narrow corridors and then around the mall itself. It felt claustrophobic to be honest, and the weekend crowd was threatening me to topple over the edge of the railing. So I decided to take refuge outside by the river, despite the sun's welcoming arms.

Clarke Quay is an alien world to me. On this side of the town, everything so new and different from where I usually hang out. Old warehouses were transformed into bars and clubs during the 90s, and has been growing in size and numbers ever since. Because it was merely the end of the afternoon, most of the clubs weren't opened yet, and the gates were drawn and locked. However, the narrow pavements were already filled with weekend shoppers, some bringing their children along and pulling them around as if they are stubborn dogs. I wandered the place alone, and decided to take a seat next to the river where the steep steps were.

You can be mad in the morning
I'll take back what I said
Just don't leave me alone here
It's cold baby...

The green moss could be seen from where I was, stuck to the side of the stony steps and unyielding to the murky waters. Riverboats traveled down the river, like a knife that slices through a block of cheese. It left giant ripples that widened from the tail end of the boat, and the waves licked the stony shores where I was as it passed. In the glaring sun, the people on the bridge to my left looked like matches that were burned out by a fire. And the tourists on the riverboat squinted their eyes up at the skyscrapers all around them, all the while trying to take pictures. I waved at a Caucasian man, and he smiled back at me from where he was. I think he took a picture of me as he passed me by, but I wasn't sure since the sun was too glaring. I took a picture of it with my camera, right at the moment when a friendly cloud came to block out the child.

It was a beautiful afternoon I must say, a fitting end to a terrible day out. The sun was warm, but not angry at that time. It felt more like a beautiful girl who demands no attention on herself whatsoever. Despite all the light she is giving out, everybody turns their faces away from her, avoiding her, cursing her. I almost took pity then, until I realized that it was the same sun that got me all fired up only hours before. So I directed my attention at the Caucasian couple next to me next to the river, and in contrast with the couple that sat further down the shore, I saw in between - myself.

Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed

Come on' back to bed...

Further down the shore was a Chinese couple, a young couple, sitting by the shore just as I was, but in the company of one another. It didn't help that my loneliness was fueled by the Damien Rice song playing in my head - on repeat. The boy drove his head into the girl's laps, tickling her inner thighs with her head and she screamed out suddenly over the noise of the crowd behind. But they cared little of our attention on them, emitting a kind of youthful ignorance somehow - as if to tell the world that we could make any judgments about them and they wouldn't have changed a thing. They were that confident of themselves, so sure about their love for one another. The boy leaned back, and wrapped his right arm around the girl's waist. In return, she placed her head into the hollow of the boy's shoulder, whispering private words into his ears which made him tickle her some more. It was a pleasant sight, pleasant in a painful way. The way a perfect person would seem to become an eye sore of sorts, or how admiration soon becomes envy or jealousy. I have come to terms with that at the sight of these ignorant couples, but it is not their fault is it? It isn't. For there are others unlike them, people living just between myself and them. The kind of couple working under the term "We" but at the same time, living a thousand miles away from one another.

Nearer to me, the Caucasian couple sat with their shades stuck to their faces and shielding themselves from the sun, and the eyes of the public from their own. They sat next to each other throughout my time there, sides of their legs touching one another's and shoulders blades just teasing their senses. The girl poked the boy's left knee with her bottle of water, trying to tell him something in a foreign tongue. But he was unmoved, with his gazed constantly fixated on the boats passing by, or the bird that soar through the air high above. He stared mostly at the ripples made by the boat, or the glistering surface of the water the sun was making - everything but his female partner that sat there, desperately trying to catch his attention.

What will this fix?
You know you're not a quick forgive
And I won't sleep through this
I survive for the breath you are finished with

I wonder what they were talking about, though it was loud enough for me to hear but spoken in a different language. He seemed upset about something, but he kept his lips shut. All the while, the girl would say a string of words into his ears with her fingers running through his brown hair. But at the non-verbal hint of the boy's silence, she would return to her own lifeless gaze into the clouds above and remain that way until she decides to talk to him again. It repeated for a couple of times, all the while with the Chinese couple down the shores, laughing and chattering away with their own inside jokes.

They reminded me of who we were at the end, and the couple down the shore reminded me of who we were at the very beginning. In the small distance between the two, a lifespan of what happened in my own relationship, drawn out with an imaginary line along the stony steps. Suddenly, The Beginning seems so very far away from where I am now, and The End still feels too close for comfort. I could feel the girl's agony as she repeatedly tries to cheer her partner up, as she makes different attempts to catch his attention. But under those shades, his eyes never faltered from the waves - not even once. It was as if her efforts were as good as nothing, as if they were useless and he was oblivious to them. Like I said, too close to comfort. And it's not as if the couple further away provided any of those.

You can be mad in the morning
I'll take back what I said
Just don't leave me alone here
It's cold baby...

A couple of things go through my mind when I see couples these days. Old thoughts, the same old ones I had when I was still single. "Was I like that?" I would ask myself, and then the question will come back to bite my ass with the answer "Yes, you were". Between the contrasts, I saw myself throughout the months from the beginning till the end. It was clear, that at the very beginning, we were all too ignorant and too naive to see the evident end to it all. But who could have guessed, that the little chemistry we shared could cause an explosion so big, that it'd blow us apart into a million pieces. At the very end, it was all about following through the motions, doing things because we ought to do them, and saying things because we feel like we need to say them. A kiss becomes a punctuation, the word 'love' becomes the little upward curve at the end of a treble clef. How trivial they become, how unimportant.

Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed
Come back to bed

The interesting thing I noticed, as I stared upon the couples. In between the contrasts, there sat a man. He was there, a hagged man probably in his forties, with a black polo t-shirt and a pale brown shorts. He sat there shaking his head, his face was bloated and red for some reason. He looked drunk, but it was too early to be that way too. There was a scar at the side of his head, a sign of an operation done long ago perhaps. With his hair neatly shaved down to their roots, the scar was livid and clear. Something was wrong with his gaze, the way his eyes would flicker from this to that, and then back. It was as if he was about to gall into a seizure, but always managed to pull himself together. He reminded me of the mad man that roamed the coffee shop near my Primary School last time, the same crazy man who pulled at Andy's hair as he screamed out for help. And the worst part was, he reminded me of somebody else too, somebody familiar. Somebody I know, somebody like me.

I must have been mad, while I was halfway through my own relationship, clinging on to the hopeless and being so stubborn about things. There he was seated in between the two couples, like myself during those times, completely out of my mind. They say that love makes you do stupid things, so I think I must have fallen victim to the same thing. I must have been mad as well, I must have been too blind to see anything. My eyes flickered too, my attention never staying long enough on anything for me to realize the truth. So I allowed things to happen, and I forgave mistakes that were made.

But then at the end of the day, like all the places we go to in life, we must depart. XinYu met me by the river a few minutes later, tapping me on the shoulder and joining me there for a while in the glare of the sun. At that time, it took refuge behind a cloud, almost as if it was shy to show her face to us again. I picked myself up from there and dusted my pants off. And taking one last glance at the people I just saw, I left the place with my hands in my pocket and chin held high in the evening breeze. For the first time today, everything felt comfortable. So brand new. So alive.